I’m participating in the summit. We recorded part of my session, and if you want to improve your leadership, you’ll benefit from the summit. I recommend signing up! There are many short recordings of what you’ll hear at the online event so you can learn and find out more.

Leadership, education, and you

When a principal cares

Jonathon was a 7th grade student who moved from Florida to Alaska. His family towed their camper all the way across the country and parked it in a campground in Kodiak, Alaska, a few days before school started. While sitting in his camper one day, there was a knock at the door.

Surprised to see visitors, Jonathon opened the door to see who was there. He was excited to meet his new principal and another teacher from his school as they were out doing home visits, welcoming all the students back to school.

Nearly everyone in the country has a connection to a K-12 school, either by virtue of a friend or relative that works there, a son or daughter that attends a school, a business that serves the same community, or some other connection. We each have someone who has a school experience. But what does that school experience look like?

If you were to move across the country and live in a camper, what would the school experience be like? Would you have a school team that came and visited you at your home to welcome you to school? Would your students have an experiential education? Would you be involved and aware as a parent about what kinds of things were happening in the school? As a business leader, would you be engaged in the education at the school?

Ask yourselves these questions about the schools around you right now, too.

These are important questions to ask, and they tell a lot about a school and the experience they provide for students, parents, teachers, and the community.

The Tranformative Leadership Summit

July 31st through August 8, I am hosting an online summit where we will discuss these questions of how to improve the school experience for the different stakeholders, and it is free. I’d like you to join me.

July 31 and August 1, we will talk about how to improve the administrator experience, by helping leaders in schools understand how they can support students, teachers, and the community in a very effective manner.

The principal who cares

I’d like to go back to Jonathon at the beginning of this post, and share some side benefits of visiting his home.

First, he was living in a camper trailer, and he and his parents knew from that moment on that he was important enough to be found and visited.

His first impression with the school was that they cared. This made future interactions based on that belief, which means that he was able to believe that the first intention of his teachers and principal was to care.

Jonathon’s school also gave him a lot of choice as he went through his school year. Jonathon was able to choose many things that helped him learn in a way that benefited him because he was personally enrolled in the experience.

Finally, Jonathon’s principal was an active member of the community and found ways to serve the community while engaging them.